Search form

You are here

Being pregnant

Dinah and Ben talk about being pregnant.

Dinah and Ben's IVF treatment lasted four years until Dinah finally gave birth to their daughter Tallulah in 2010. In listening to this podcast series please bear in mind that Dinah and Ben's experience is not universal, it is their story. This podcast series is not intended to replace or replicate medical advice.

Transcript

Being pregnant

So my pregnancy was probably the easiest and best and smoothest part of the whole experience. I was just so lucky and I felt like I was justified at getting a good pregnancy because I’d been through so much to get there. So I felt like I was you know, given this gift of here you go, have a good pregnancy because you had such a crap time beforehand. Having said that though, you know, it was very smooth and very straightforward and I absolutely loved it and I did all those things that you know, I always wanted to do. I took a photo of my belly every week and I got a cast made of my belly and you know I had you know a baby shower and all those things. I loved wearing fat clothes and you know, I loved being fat. I rubbed my belly the whole time. My Dad said to me one day “you are going to rub that baby away because you are rubbing it so much” but I didn’t care because I’d wanted to do it for so long. I just wanted to enjoy it. Having said that, you know the first 12 weeks were a really anxious time for both Ben and I and for our families as well. You know, my parents would ring me you know regularly saying, you know, “how are you” with that note of you know, please tell me you are okay, please tell me it’s all going well and every milestone that we would get to – so you know, we had an early scan to check that everything was okay so about six or seven weeks I think we had that scan done and that was okay and then the 12 week scan, the build up to that, I would get quite anxious and then you know there’d be this huge sense of relief when that was positive and successful as well. Each scan was a huge milestone and it definitely came with a sense of anxiety beforehand about you know, what if, what if, what if but you know – I don’t know, there was something about this experience that was different. We’d never sort of been – we’d never had a 12 week scan before and we’d never had a 20 week scan before and you know, everything – every time we got to a particular milestone it was like we’ve never been here before so that must be positive and so we just sort of enjoyed it as much as we could I guess and yeah, the whole planning process – I mean I remember you know looking up name websites, you know, websites with baby names and just spending hours and hours and hours doing that and it was just such a positive, exciting time and a special time in our lives and also the lives of our families as well. Particularly my Dad was quite emotional you know when I started to show and you know, every time I saw him he would be you know, quite sort of teary and emotional that I was growing and that I was looking so good and he spent a lot of time telling me how good I look and how beautiful I look and I actually got stopped in the street twice by women saying “you look amazing, you look like you are absolutely glowing” and I think it was just pure relief that it was finally happening to me.

It was a pretty good time. Yeah, there was lots of – I think like what Dinah’s saying, it was sort of 50:50. It was really good and there was also a little bit of I don’t want to celebrate this too hard, just in case things don’t work out and then every time you’d have a scan you’d just let yourself celebrate thing a little bit more and you know as the pregnancy progressed and you know – and then after a while that kind of faded away didn’t it, we got to a point where we were pretty confident we were actually going to have a baby. It was about two days before. It didn’t take that long but at some point in the pregnancy it definitely ticked over from you know, let’s keep a lid on it kind of you know to use a football term, you know, one week at a time sort of feeling for a little while and then there came a point where you know, it was a clear realisation that you know, this was actually going to happen and then I think we started to really relax into it and we really enjoyed it so I mean obviously a huge change from what we’d been through for the previous you know five or so years.

About

VARTA provides independent information and support for individuals, couples, and health professionals on fertility, infertility, assisted reproductive treatment (ART) and the best interests of children born.